Pope Benedict XVI shocked the entire Catholic world yesterday when he proclaimed that the act of prayer has been becoming much more ineffective due to overuse.

“Vatican statisticians have looked at the data for the last 2000 years and it’s pretty convincing that prayers are just not generating the kind of traction these days as they did in Noah’s time, for example. It’s gotten to the point where the effects of prayer are practically undetectable. Today, whether you pray for something or not really doesn’t have any impact on what happens in the world or in your personal life. People have been praying for world peace for centuries, and we have more armed conflict than ever. Even we at the Vatican have been praying for the Lord to recall Pat Robertson for pretty much forever, to no avail.”

“It’s becoming increasingly apparent that with a world population approaching 7 billion people, we’re simply overburdening Him with too many trivial requests. ‘Help me with my test’. ‘Help me find my car keys.’ ‘Make it rain here or there’. ‘Give Notre Dame another touchdown to beat the point spread’. With this in mind, I think that if we pray for only the most important life-or-death matters, we’ll start seeing higher success rates for prayer. And more importantly, the Lord will bless us with rewards in these much more pressing matters of our time.”

The Pontiff concluded his thoughts with, “So I beseech you to be judicious and sparing in your volume of prayers… but whatever you do, make sure you still don’t ever use condoms. They are an unnatural tool of perversion, a gift from Satan to the sinner to allow immoral acts to occur without repercussions. Plus, they feel like you’re wearing socks in a shower. It totally kills the sensation. “